The Chatsworth Township Library is located in the small Central Illinois village of Chatsworth. It has a total yearly budget under $20,000 and a population of 1,444 (1993). The…
Abstract
The Chatsworth Township Library is located in the small Central Illinois village of Chatsworth. It has a total yearly budget under $20,000 and a population of 1,444 (1993). The library's primary role, established by a Citizens Survey, is to serve as a popular reading library for all ages. These were established facts when I became the librarian there in 1989. What's more, the Board of Trustees was concerned about the low circulation figures and wanted to generate more interest in library usage.
The development and use of a fiction assessment conspectus is explored in three article.
Isabelle Le Breton‐Miller and Danny Miller
This paper attempts to reconcile two opposing views of the strategies and conduct of closely held firms: that of entrepreneurship and that of family business. The former view…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper attempts to reconcile two opposing views of the strategies and conduct of closely held firms: that of entrepreneurship and that of family business. The former view suggests that these firms tend to be value maximizing organizations that pursue growth strategies and outperform. The latter often argues that these businesses are utility maximizers that pursue conservative harvest strategies and fail to outperform.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to reconcile the controversy, this paper examines the literature in an attempt to relate ownership priorities and risk taking preferences to governance distinctions relating to family involvement, ownership, and management.
Findings
It concludes that the value‐maximization expectations of the entrepreneurship literature apply only to lone or unrelated founder businesses whose owners, unencumbered by family distractions, embrace growth and outperform. By contrast the utility‐maximization expectations of the family business literature apply when there are multiple family owners or executives. These parties are argued to be harvest‐oriented, mediocre performers, especially after a new generation has entered the firm. This may be because their priorities and loyalties are shared between business and family considerations. However, family and lone founder firm outcomes are argued to be further shaped by owners' levels of control and ownership, their managerial roles, and the breadth of family personal and generational involvement.
Practical implications
The analysis has implications for the effective governance, board composition, and management of these different types of firms.
Originality/value
The paper reconciles two important literatures to derive implications for strategy and performance that must be addressed by agents of corporate governance in family and founder firms.
Details
Keywords
Manlio Del Giudice, Maria Rosaria Della Peruta and Vincenzo Maggioni
The purpose of this paper is to examine how the organizational change management that characterizes the transitional moments of family businesses may open a transcendental horizon…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how the organizational change management that characterizes the transitional moments of family businesses may open a transcendental horizon from which a business model arises that is built around the sovereignty of the family institution and must necessarily share the solution of agency problems which emerge as the overlapping between ownership and management recedes, and a management style oriented towards the evolution of the relations between family and business.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking its starting point from recent research, the proposed study aims at finding empirical validation of research hypotheses formulated through the development of a factorial analysis and the construction of an innovative model of structural equations able to provide an empirical solution to processes, up to now, left unresolved by management literature on the subject.
Findings
By empirically linking stewardship behaviours to capacity to keep the dynastic myth for generations, the authors have demonstrated that stewardship behaviors act as an effective governance mechanism for family businesses in specific change management situations related to the process of generational turnover. Further, the authors provide an important first step in linking theory building with theory testing and conclude the stewardship scale is positioned to play an important role in establishing alignment between the representation of consciousness of family business, in the realization of the self, and extra‐psychological symbolic dimension, in the realization of family history and destiny.
Research limitations/implications
These discussions need to be validated and rendered more generalizable through extensive empirical research. First, though this study drew from cross‐sectional industrial data for the pilot test and then from a more focused industry‐specific sample (validation study), the generalizability of the construct could be a limitation of the stewardship scale. Second, we acknowledge the criticisms associated with a single country sample bias in our sample. A third associated limitation relates to the difficulty of developing a scale to tap individual and firm level behaviors.
Originality/value
Despite much progress, the extant literature on the psychology of strategic management has emphasized the behavioural and cognitive aspects of strategy formulation and implementation at the expense of emotional and affective ones, leading to an inadequate portrayal of strategic management as a series of rational and dispassionate activities. The originality of this empirical study has been to retrace, through the analysis of specific phenomena such as the multigenerational transition which characterize family businesses, the unconscious decisions within the decisional processes, which may transmit the original entrepreneurial dream into an organizational pathway, even in the case of a non‐family succession.
Details
Keywords
Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are…
Abstract
Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.
IN NOVEMBER 1989, RONALD W. SKEDDLE, chief executive of Libbey‐Owens‐Ford Co., stood before a group of financial executives and delivered a sobering speech about business ethics…
Abstract
IN NOVEMBER 1989, RONALD W. SKEDDLE, chief executive of Libbey‐Owens‐Ford Co., stood before a group of financial executives and delivered a sobering speech about business ethics. Four years later, he was standing before his own board members trying to explain certain alleged irregularities in the running of the company. Apparently they didn't like what they heard, and he (along with two other Libbey‐Owens‐Ford executives) was asked to step down. According to court documents filed in Columbus, Ohio (the company, a division of Pilkington P.L.C., is based in Toledo), Skeddle et. al. had bilked over $7.7 million from Libbey‐Owens‐Ford through various schemes. Skeddle could not be reached for comment.
This article surveys the literature dealing with theory and applications of life cycle costing (LCC). It deals with the literature published in the last 25 years and provides 667…
Abstract
This article surveys the literature dealing with theory and applications of life cycle costing (LCC). It deals with the literature published in the last 25 years and provides 667 references.
The evolution from transaction marketing to relationship marketing in recent years has resulted in research indicating the need for more rigorous databases and greater utilization…
Abstract
The evolution from transaction marketing to relationship marketing in recent years has resulted in research indicating the need for more rigorous databases and greater utilization of current computerized tracking systems. Relationship selling has been examined and the results stress long‐term perspectives to the dyadic exchange process to enhance sales results. Considering the role of trust and culture in the relationship marketing process would indicate the need to pursue future research into a deeper understanding of the customer. Seeking knowledge of a customer’s personal feelings concerning their comfort level with various communication approaches could enhance the reception of messages crafted for them. The discipline needs to move beyond the numbers to a more abstract analysis of the customer as an individual with specific feelings toward various marketing approaches.